Obscure Saint


 

Obscure Saint of the Week
Saint John Southworth (1592-1654; England)
Feast Day: June 28
After the establishment of the Church of England, when it was illegal to be Catholic in England, John studied and was ordained a priest at the English College in Douai, France.  He covertly returned to England to minister to the underground Catholics on October 13, 1619.  He was arrested and condemned to death in 1627.  For the next few years, he was held in a number of prisons until Queen Henrietta Maria convinced her husband, King Charles I, to send he and seventeen other priests to exile in France on April 11, 1630.
Fr. John was not to be stopped, so he and St. Henry Morse soon returned to England.  They worked together through various trials, including ministering to the sick and dying during an outbreak of the plague in 1636.  He was arrested again in Westminster on November 28, 1637.  He continued to do good works in prison, and was released on July 16, 1640.
This freedom did not last long.  He was arrested one more time on December 2, 1640.  He was again condemned to death for the crime of being a priest.  He spent the next almost 14 years in prison (he waited so long due to the English Civil War) until he was hanged, drawn, and quartered on June 28, 1654.  His remains were purchased by the Spanish ambassador to England and sent to the English College in Douai.  During the French Revolution, his relics were hidden to prevent destruction.  They were rediscovered in 1927, and they are now housed at Westminster Cathedral in London.  He is commemorated as one of the 40 Martyrs of England and Wales on October 25.


Obscure Saint of the Week
Saint Joseph Cafasso (1811-1860; Italy)
Feast Day: June 23
Patronage: prisoners, prison chaplains
Giuseppe was born with a deformed spine, so he remained short and crippled his whole life.  That did not stop him from his vocation.  He was ordained a priest in 1833.  He served as a professor of moral theology starting in 1836 at the ecclesiastical college in Turin.  From 1846 to 1860 he was the superior of the college.  He also was the pastor of St. Francis Church in 1848.
As a priest, he was well regarded as a confessor.  He also strongly promoted devotion to the Blessed Sacrament.  He wrote a biography of St. Joseph.  Despite his medical condition, he was known to undertake vigorous mortifications unless his doctor told him not to.  Giuseppe met the future St. John Bosco when he was twelve, and he was long his friend and advisor.
His greatest ministry came in the prisons of Turin.  As a chaplain, he worked to reform the prisoners as well as the prisons that held them.  He was an effective chaplain, winning many converts.  He once escorted 60 newly converted prisoners as they were brought to the gallows.  Since they had shortly before received absolution, he called them “hanged saints.”  He was known as the “Priest of the Gallows.”
St. Joseph died on June 23, 1860, due to complications from various medical problems. 
St. John Bosco preached his funeral Mass.  He was canonized by Pope Pius XII on June 22, 1947.
“We are born to love, we live to love, and we will die to love still more.”


Obscure Saint of the Week
Saint Lutgardis (1182-1246; Belgium)
Feast Day: June 16
Patronage: childbirth, blind people, disabled people, Belgium, the Flemish
Lutgardis was an attractive girl who enjoyed nice clothing and was not particularly religious.  At the age of 12 her family lost her dowry in a failed business venture.  Since this would make it difficult for her to be married, they sent her to a Benedictine convent near Saint Trond.
In her late teens, she had a vision of Christ showing her His wounds.  She soon embraced her vocation as a Benedictine nun.  While in prayer, she had other visions of Christ.  She sometimes even levitated and dripped blood from her forehead while contemplating the Passion of Christ.  She eventually decided that the Benedictines were not a strict enough order for her, so in 1208 she joined the Cistercians at Aywières (near Brussels), thanks to the encouragement of her friend
St. Christina the Astonishing.  The Cistercians spoke French, not her native Flemish.  Lutgardis intentionally did not learn French so as to live in greater solitude.  Around this time, early Franciscan and Dominican priests arrived in the area, and she supported them greatly by prayer, fasting, and offering hospitality.  The friars named her “mater praedicatorum” or “the mother of preachers.”  She showed gifts for healing, prophecy, spiritual wisdom, and teaching the Gospels.  Lutgardis became blind for the last eleven years of her life, but she accepted it as a gift because she was less distracted by the world.  Towards the end of her life, in one of her visions, Christ told her when she would die.  She then spent the remaining time praying for the conversion of sinners.
St. Lutgardis died on June 16, 1246, the day after the Feast of the Holy Trinity, of natural causes.  In 1796 her relics were transferred to Ittre, Belgium, to avoid destruction during the French Revolution.


Obscure Saint of the Week
Saint Rafael Guízar y Valencia (1878-1938; Mexico)
Feast Day: June 6
Rafael was one of eleven children born to Prudenzio Guízar and Natividad Valencia in Cotija, Mexico.  He was ordained a priest in 1901 and conducted missions throughout Mexico.  He also founded the Congregation of Missionaries of Our Lady of Hope in 1903.  During his ministry, he founded a school for poor girls and two colleges for boys.
The Mexican state began its persecution of the Church in 1911, at which point his Congregation and his missionary work were prohibited.  He continued his work anyways, at risk of great persecution.  He founded a Catholic magazine in Mexico City, but the government quickly shut it down.  So instead, he went on the road as a missionary, but he disguised himself as a merchant or musician.  The government pursued him anyways.  A few times soldiers even shot at him.  In 1916 he had to flee the country, first to the United States and then to Guatemala.  He remained there for a year before traveling to Cuba for missionary work from 1917 to 1919.
Rafael was named bishop of the Diocese of Veracruz-Jalapa on August 1, 1919.  Since it was still dangerous for him to return home, he went to Colombia for further missionary work.  He returned to Mexico on January 4, 1920.
The persecution by the government grew worse.  They shut down the diocesan seminary so Bishop Rafael moved his seminarians to Mexico City where they continued their studies secretly.  In 1931, the governor of Veracruz enacted a decree that there could only be one priest for every 100,000 Catholics.  Bishop Rafael closed all of the churches in protest.  When Governor Tejeda ordered he be shot on sight, the bishop walked in the governor’s office.  The governor feared that killing him would cause too large an uprising, so he revoked the order to kill him.  Bishop Rafael spent the next 7 years continuing to fight for the Church.  He died on June 6, 1938, after having suffered a heart attack in December 1937.  He was canonized on October 15, 2006, by Pope Benedict XVI.


Obscure Saint of the Week
Saint Ursula Ledóchowska (1865-1939; Austria/Italy)
Feast Day: May 29
Patronage: Polish girls, orphans, educators
She was born Julia on April 17, 1865, to a Polish noble, Count Anthony Ledóchowski, and an Austrian mother, Countess Josephine Salis-Zizers.  She was one of ten children (her sister is Blessed Theresa Ledóchowska; her brother Fr. Włodzimierz Ledóchowski was Superior General of the Jesuits from 1915-1942).  After financial failure, the family moved to St. Poelten, Austria.  Her father died in 1885 of smallpox, and her uncle Cardinal Mieczysław Halka-Ledóchowski cared for the family.
Julia became an Ursuline nun, taking the name Maria Ursula of Jesus in 1886.  Pope St. Pius X sent her to Russia as a missionary in 1907, but she was soon expelled during the Communist Revolution and instead became a missionary in Scandinavia where she translated a catechism in Finnish.
Pope Benedict XV asked her to move to Rome, where she founded the Ursulines of the Agonizing Heart of Jesus (Gray Ursulines) in 1920 and inspired many sisters to join her.  She was well known as a respected orator, and often spoke with royalty and other national leaders.  She was also outspoken in her call for Polish independence.
Ursula died of carcinoma at the convent in Rome on May 29, 1939.  She was canonized by Pope St. John Paul II in 2003.  The Gray Ursulines continue to serve today in Poland, Italy, France, Canada, Brazil, Argentina, Finland, Germany, Tanzania, Belarus, and Ukraine.
“Holiness does not demand anything great, beyond the ability of the person.  It depends on God’s love; every daily act can be transformed into an act of love.”


Obscure Saint of the Week
Saint Joanna the Myrrh-bearer (1^st century; Palestine)
Feast Day: May 24
Joanna, whose name means “God (YHWH) has been gracious,” is mentioned in the Gospel of Luke (8:1-3): “Afterward (Jesus) journeyed from one town and village to another, preaching and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom of God.  Accompanying him were the Twelve and some women who had been cured of evil spirits and infirmities, Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out, Joanna, the wife of Herod’s steward Chuza, Susanna, and many others who provided for them out of their resources.”  So from this we know that she was a disciple of Christ who had been cured of demons or illness and who helped provide for He and the Apostles, and that her husband was Chuza, the manager of the household of King Herod Antipas.  Certain traditions say that she gave the head of John the Baptist a good burial.
She is later mentioned in the same Gospel (24:10) with Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James as the women who went to anoint the body of Christ and found the empty tomb on Easter Sunday.  In the Orthodox Church, the three are celebrated on the Third Sunday of Pascha (Easter) as the myrrh-bearers.  In the Catholic Church, she is highly venerated by the Jesuits.  At least one scholar, Richard Bauckham, says that she is also referred to by St. Paul in his letter to the Romans (16:7): “Great Andronicus and Junia, my relatives and fellow prisoners; they are prominent among the apostles and they were in Christ before me.”  He argues that “Junia” is the Latin form of the Hebrew “Joanna.”
Interestingly, there is little else known about her.  There are a couple of other traditions.  One is that she was one of the women who joined the disciples in the upper room in prayer.  She may have also been one of the 120 who chose St. Matthias to replace Judas as one of the apostles and that she was present on Pentecost.  Other than that, there are no traditions regarding her life after Pentecost.


Obscure Saint of the Week

Saint Michel Garicoïts (1797-1863; France)
Feast Day: May 21

Michel was the oldest son of peasants in the Pyrenees, Arnold and Gratianne Garicoïts.  He was far from perfect as a child, with stories of him throwing a stone at a neighbor who insulted his mother and stealing various objects.  He worked as a shepherd on neighboring farms to help support the family.  During the French Revolution, his family sheltered a number of priests, helping them to cross into bordering Spain.  This, and the reception of Holy Communion in 1811, lead to his early calling to the priesthood, but his family was too poor to afford the seminary education needed.
To help out, his grandmother arranged for Michel to work in a parish rectory and in the bishop’s kitchen to pay for his education.  He studied philosophy at Aire, France, theology in Dax, France, and was ordained to the priesthood for the Diocese of Bayonne on December 20, 1823.
He first was a parish priest in Cambo.  His major conflict was with the Jansenist heresy, which argued that nobody was worthy to receive Holy Communion.  Instead, he promoted frequent Communion and devotion to the Sacred Heart.  He later became a professor of philosophy at the seminary in Lestelle-Bétharram, France, and eventually the rector.  He worked to reform the seminary to produce more holy priests.  He also helped St. Joan Elizabeth des Bichier des Âges to found the Daughters of the Cross (Sisters of St. Andrew the Apostle) and himself founded the Priests of the Sacred Heart of Bétharram (Bétharram Fathers) in 1838.  Their charism is to evangelize people through missions dedicated to the Sacred Heart.  They currently serve in Argentina, Brazil, Central African Republic, France, Great Britain, India, Israel, Italy, Ivory Coast, Jordan, Palestine, Paraguay, Spain, Thailand, and Uruguay.
He died of natural causes on May 14, 1863.  He was canonized by Pope Pius XII on July 6, 1947.


 

Obscure Saint of the Week
Saint Joseph Benedict of Cottolengo
(1786-1842; Sardinia, Italy)
Feast Day:  April 30
Giuseppe Benedetto was born into a middle-class Italian family.  He studied at the seminary in Turin and was ordained to the priesthood in 1811.
Early in his priesthood he saw it more as a career than a vocation.  This changed one night when he was called to tend to a poor, sick woman who was in labor.  She needed medical help, but she had been turned away due to her lack of money and because she had tuberculosis.  Fr. Joseph stayed with her, hearing her Confession, giving her Communion, and administering last rites.  He baptized the newborn baby, and watched helplessly as they both died.  He would never be the same.
In 1827, he opened a home for the sick and homeless.  This home expanded as he received help from religious brothers and sisters.  The local police closed the home in 1831 during a cholera outbreak, thinking it was the source.
Not to be deterred, in 1832 he opened the Little House of Divine Providence (Piccola Casa) in Turin.  The Casa soon grew into a small village, which depended almost totally on alms, including orphanages, hospitals, schools, chapels, and workshops with programs to help the poor and sick.  He continued to direct the Casa until just before his death of typhus on April 30, 1842.  The Casa continues to operate, serving around 8,000 people a day.  He was canonized by Pope Pius XI on March 19, 1934.  He was named among the saints of charity in Pope Benedict XVI’s encyclical Deus caritas est.
His last words: “When I am in heaven, where everything is possible, I will cling to the mantle of the Mother of God and I will not turn my eyes from you.  But do not forget what this poor old man has said to you.”


Obscure Saint of the Week
Saint Mary Elizabeth Hesselblad (1870-1957; Sweden; Italy)
Feast Day: April 24
She was the fifth of thirteen children born to Augusto Roberto and Cajsa Pettesdotter Hesselblad.  Mary was raised in the Reformed Church of Sweden.  The family struggled through many hardships and moved a number of times.
Mary emigrated to New York in 1888 to find work to support her family in Sweden.  She worked at Roosevelt Hospital as she studied nursing, and she also would visit and help the sick and aged at their homes.  While working with the large Catholic population in New York, she came to love the Church as the place closest to God.  She converted to Catholicism, receiving a conditional baptism by Fr. Johann Georg Hagen on August 15, 1902.  While on pilgrimage to Rome later that same year, she was Confirmed.
After a brief return to New York, she moved permanently to Rome to start her religious life.  She entered the Carmelite House of St. Bridget of Sweden on March 25, 1904.  Two years later, she took the habit of the Brigittines (Order of the Most Holy Saviour of St. Bridget).  Mary returned to Sweden in 1923, ministering to the poor and attempting to revitalize the Brigittine movement in her homeland.
In 1931, Mary was placed in control of the Brigittine house and church in Rome.  She helped to establish a Brigittine house in India in 1937.  During World War II, she saved numerous Jews and others persecuted by the Nazis by giving them refuge in Rome.  For her efforts, she was recognized by Yad Vashem as one of the Righteous Among the Nations in 2004.  Mary died of natural causes on April 24, 1957.  She was canonized by Pope Francis on June 5, 2016.
“We must nourish a great love for God and our neighbors; a strong love, an ardent love, a love that burns away impatience, or a bitter word, a love that lets an inadvertence or act of neglect pass without comment, a love that lends itself readily to an act of charity.”


Obscure Saint of the Week
Saint Agnes of Montepulciano (1268-1317; Italy)
Feast Day: April 20
Agnes was born into a wealthy family, but from an early age wished to join a convent.  She was admitted to the convent at age 9, after receiving permission from her parents and the pope.  Agnes became an abbess at age 15 after being given special permission by Pope Nicholas IV.  She worked to make her abbey more holy and austere.  She, herself, lived off only bread and water, slept on the ground, and had a stone for a pillow.  Her holy reputation attracted many other sisters.
In 1298 she returned to the Dominican convent in Montepulciano.  She served there as prioress for the last 17 years of her life.  She died on April 20, 1317, after a lengthy illness.  It is said that when she died, all the young children in the region spoke of her holiness and her death.  She was canonized by Pope Benedict XIII in 1726.
Many legends were spread about her life.  It is said that flying lights surrounded her family’s house to announce her birth.  She reportedly levitated up to two feet off the ground when she prayed.  At certain times when she knelt to pray, violets, lilies, and roses bloomed.  An angel brought her Communion.  She had visions of the Blessed Virgin Mary, including one where she was holding the infant Jesus, and she woke up holding a golden crucifix.  When she grew sick at the end of her life, she brought a drowned child back from the dead.  Also, a spring welled up where she was treated which healed numerous other people.


Obscure Saint of the Week
Saint Joseph Moscati (1880-1927; Italy)
Feast Day: April 12
Patronage: bachelors, physicians
Giuseppe Mario Carolo Alphonse Moscati was born the seventh of nine children of a prominent lawyer.  The family moved to Naples when he was four years old.  Giuseppe completed his doctorate at the University of Naples in 1903.
He served as administrator of a hospital while continuing to study and work on medical research.  After Mount Vesuvius erupted on April 8, 1906, he worked tirelessly in the recovery but refused recognition for his work.  He also led the efforts to stop a cholera outbreak in Naples.  Giuseppe became a member of the Royal Academy of Surgical Medicine in 1911 and completed another doctorate in physiological chemistry.  He continued to work at very hospitals and was one of the first doctors to use insulin for diabetes.
When the First World War broke out, he tried to enlist, but he was rejected.  Instead, he ran a hospital for the wounded and treated around 3,000 soldiers himself.  During this time he became noted for healings, sometimes miraculously, and the occasional ability to diagnose illnesses without seeing patients.  All along he was devout, attending daily Mass and taking a vow of chastity.  He saw medical work primarily as a way of alleviating suffering, not as a means to make profits, and he would sometimes use the patient’s faith and the Sacraments to effect a cure, and supported the poor and the outcast. 
Giuseppe died on April 12, 1927 of a stroke while taking a break between patients.  He was canonized by Pope St. John Paul II on October 25, 1987.


Obscure Saint of the Week
Saint Julia Billiart (1751-1816; France, Belgium)
Feast Day: April 8
Patronage: against poverty, against sickness, for sick people
She was born Mary Rose Julia Billiart, the sixth of seven children of peasant farmers in Cuvilly, France.  Though she was poorly educated, she knew her Catechism by heart by the age of 7 and would teach it to other children.  At 14 she took a private vow of chastity and wished to give her life to the poor.  She was known for her embroidery and lace and was called “the saint of Cuvilly.”
When she was 22, she witnessed the shooting of her father, a shock that left her with a “mysterious illness.”  By 1784 she was paralyzed and confined to her bed as a cripple.  Despite this, she continued to pray, was able to make lace and linens, and still was able to teach the faith.  During that time, the French Revolution ravaged the country.  She and others loyal to the Church had to hide at various points.  Despite that, some of her friends helped to organize a community to help the poor.  She was miraculously healed of her paralysis on June 1, 1804, and she was able to continue her work.
This organization became the Congregation of the Sisters of Notre Dame (Institute of Notre Dame; Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur), which was dedicated to the education of girls (not to be confused with the School Sisters of Notre Dame who are prevalent in Milwaukee).  It was formally founded in Amiens, France, when Julia and two others made their first vows on October 15, 1804.
Julia died on April 8, 1816, while praying at their motherhouse in Namur, Belgium.  At the time of her death, the Institute had 15 convents.  She was canonized by Pope Paul VI on June 22, 1969.  The Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur continue to serve around the world, especially in Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States East Coast and California.
“Do what you can and don’t waste time lamenting over what you can’t do.”


Obscure Saint of the Week
Blessed Natalia Tulasiewicz (1906-1945, Poland)
Feast Day: March 31
Natalia was born in Rzeszów on April 9, 1906, the second of six children of Adam and Natalia.  The family first moved to Krakow in 1915, and then later to Poznan in 1921.  After graduating from Poznan University, she was a school teacher and a leader in the lay apostolate.  She, like many members of her family, had chronic health issues.  She was engaged to Janek, but he declared himself a communist and, after eight years together, she broke off the engagement.  She instead focused on her spiritual life, attending Mass nearly every day, frequently going to Adoration in the evenings, and holding a monthly retreat day.  She wrote in her journal: “I completely and exclusively live for God.” 
During the Nazi occupation of Poland in World War II, she and her family were one of many Polish families who were thrown out of their homes shortly after the annexation of Poznan.  She became a member of the Polish Underground State and helped with secret education in Krakow.  In 1943 she volunteered to leave for Germany to provide spiritual comfort for other women who had been forced to perform harsh labor.
When the Nazis found out her true intentions, she was arrested, tortured, and sentenced to death at the forced labor camp of Ravensbrück.  In the camps she continued her work of ministering to other prisoners.  On Good Friday 1945, she stood on a stool in the barracks and consoled the other prisoners with her words on the Passion and Resurrection of Christ.  On Easter Day, March 31, 1945, she was killed in the gas chambers, just two days before Ravensbrück was liberated.  She was beatified by Pope St. John Paul II on June 13, 1999, as one of only two lay women of 108 Martyrs of World War II.


Saint Józef Bilczewski (1860-1923, Ukraine)
Feast Day: March 20
Patronage: teachers, beggars, homeless people, Archdiocese of Lviv
Józef was the oldest of nine children born to a peasant family in Wilamowice, Austria-Hungary (present day Ukraine).  He studied as a seminarian in Krakow and was ordained a priest in July 1884.  He completed a doctorate in theology at the University of Vienna in 1886.  He further went on to study Dogmatic Theology and Christian archeology in Rome and Paris.  He was named Professor of Theology at the University of Lviv in 1891.  He progressed quickly in his career, becoming Dean of the Theological Department from 1896-1897 and rector of the college in 1900.
Józef caught the eye of Emperor Franz Joseph I due to his intelligence and reputation as a cultured man.  The emperor thus recommended him to Pope Leo XIII, and he soon was named the Archbishop of Lviv, Ukraine, on December 17, 1900.  He immediately went to work rebuilding the faith, including numerous churches and working on ecumenical progress with the other Christian churches in the area.  His was a difficult assignment, bridging many different cultures through numerous hardships.  While the harshest was probably the First World War, the Polish, Ukrainian, and Jewish members of the community also had to endure the Polish-Ukrainian War in 1918-1919 and the Bolshevik invasion in 1919-1920.
With the onslaught of the Bolshevik Communists, the state imposed a harsh anti-Catholic terror in his diocese.  Between 1918 and 1921, the Archdiocese of Lviv lost around 120 priests.  Archbishop Józef was known to be a good shepherd not only of his Catholics, but of people of all ethnicities and religions.  Through those turbulent years, he helped to organize relief for refugees, victims of war, the poor and homeless, and the many groups of people in need.
St. Józef died on March 20, 1923, of anemia in Lviv.  He was canonized by Pope Benedict XVI on October 23, 2005.

Obscure Saint of the Week

Saint Jan Sarkander (1576-1620, Silesia/Moravia)
Feast Day: March 17
Jan was born to Georg and Helene in modern day Poland in the midst of the Protestant Reformation.  He married, but his wife died only a year later before they could have children.
Jan was educated by Jesuits in Prague.  He completed a Master of Philosophy degree in 1603, studied Theology in Austria, and was ordained a priest in 1609 in Graz.  He first served in Boskowitz before becoming the parish priest in Holešov in 1616.  There he became the center of a confrontation between his supporter, Baron von Labkowitz of Moravia and the anti-Catholic Bitowsky von Bystritz.
In 1618, the Thirty Years War broke out between the Catholics and Protestants, which devastated Central Europe.  As the Protestant army marched in and occupied his territory, Jan was exiled to Poland before he could return to his parish around a year later.  In 1620, Polish armies started to approach and battle was looming, so Jan marched to the field carrying the Blessed Sacrament in a monstrance to protect his people.  The armies moved on without fighting.
His enemy, von Bystritz, saw this as an opportunity to take him down.  He accused Fr. Jan of being a spy for the Polish, denounced him as a traitor, and had him arrested.  The Protestant authorities tortured him, placing him on the rack for hours, trying to force him to break the seal of confession by giving up information about Baron von Labkowitz.  He refused even the most severe beatings, and was eventually martyred by being set on fire on March 17, 1620.  His remains have been transported to the Cathedral of St. Wenceslas in Olomouc, Czech Republic.  He was canonized by Pope St. John Paul II in 1995, and hailed as a Martyr of the Confessional.

Obscure Saint of the Week

Saint Chrodegang of Metz (c.714-776, France)
Feast Day: March 6
Chrodegang was the son of Sigram and Landrada, the brother of St. Opportuna of Montreuil, and a relative of Pepin the Short.  He was educated at St. Trond Abbey and became the secretary to Charles Martel and Chancellor of France.  Despite having such high positions, he wore hair shirts and did other acts of fasting, and he ministered to the poor.
In 742 he was elected the bishop of Metz, despite being a layman.  Throughout his life, other positions he held included: Chief Minister to Pepin the Short, ambassador to the Vatican, and mayor of the palace.
No doubt his influence came from his relationship with Pepin.  Charles Martel, Pepin’s father, famously defeated Islamic invaders at the Battle of Tours in 732, which saved Europe from the Muslims and placed him as de facto leader of the Franks.  Pepin was then crowned King of the Franks in 751, aided by Chrodegang, thus beginning the Carolingian dynasty which dominated Western Europe for the next 400 years (and continued that dominance until the 20^th century through the descendants in the Houses of Luxembourg, Ivrea, and Habsburg).  The most famous member of this dynasty was Charlemagne, Pepin’s son.
Under the leadership of Pepin, Chrodegang helped to defend Rome and the papacy against the Lombards.  He also reformed the church in France through a series of councils, educating the clergy, encouraging them to live in communities under the Benedictine Rule (which may have also branched into Ireland), founding and restoring churches and monasteries, and introducing the Roman Liturgy and Gregorian Chant to France and, thus, the rest of Europe.
St. Chrodegang died on March 6, 776.  His relics, which had been venerated in the Benedictine Abbey of Saint-Symphorien, were destroyed during the French Revolution.

Obscure Saint of the Week

Saint Anne Line (1565-1601, England)
Feast Day: February 27
Patronage: childless people, converts, widows
Alice was the daughter of William Higham, a wealthy Puritan during the height of Catholic oppression in England.  She and her brother, William, converted to Catholicism and were disowned and disinherited by their parents.  She took the name “Anne” at her conversion.  Anne married another Catholic convert, Roger Line, in 1583.  He was soon after arrested for attending Mass, exiled to Flanders, Belgium, and died in 1594.
Anne was later put in charge of a house of refuge for priests in London, established by Fr. John Gerard. 
Fr. Gerard was arrested and sent to the Tower of London in 1594, but he escaped in 1597.  When officials suspected Anne of hiding him, she moved to another house, which soon became a rallying point for Catholics.  On Candlemas, February 2, 1061, a Fr. Francis Page was about to celebrate Mass there when priest-catchers broke into the house.  He quickly devested and so was safe, but the still-present altar was evidence enough for them to arrest Anne.
She was brought before the court on February 26, charged with hiding a priest.  Though they had no evidence, she proudly stated that she wished she could have hid more.  She was convicted and sentenced to hang.  She was martyred alongside two priests, Blessed Mark Barkworth and Blessed Roger Filcock (who are also remembered this day), on February 27, 1601.  At her hanging, she publicly declared, “I am sentenced to die for harbouring a Catholic priest, and so far I am from repenting for having so done, that I wish, with all my soul, that where I have entertained one, I could have entertained a thousand.”  She was canonized on October 25, 1970, by Pope Paul VI, and, therefore, she is also remembered on October 25, the feast of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales.
 

Saint Margaret of Cortona (1247-1297, Italy)

Feast Day: February 22

Patronage: against mental illness, against temptations, homeless people, single laywomen
Margaret was born to farmers in Tuscany.  Her mother died when she was seven years old and her step-mother treated her poorly.  She eloped with a young nobleman, had his son, and lived as his mistress for nine years.  In 1274, he was murdered by bandits.
Margaret saw this as a sign from God.  She publicly confessed to their affair and tried to return home, but her father did not accept her back.  She and her son took shelter with the Friars Minor in Cortona.  She was still young and attractive, occasionally gave into temptations, and each time was followed with long periods of self-hate.  She once attempted to mutilate herself to make herself less attractive, but was stopped by one of the friars.  As penance, she only ate bread and vegetables.
She cared for sick women and later cared for the sick poor, living only on alms given to her.  She became a Franciscan tertiary in 1277.  She developed a deep prayer life, including occasional visions and messages from heaven.  In prayer, she was asked: “what is your wish?”  She answered: “I neither seek nor wish for anything but you, my Lord Jesus.”
In 1286, she received a charter to work for the poor, gathered others with her, and formed a community later called the Poverelle (Poor Ones).  They founded a hospital in Cortona.  She took to speaking out against vices of all kinds and had a great devotion to the Eucharist.  Despite doing great work for the least fortunate, her early sins never left her as she remained a target of gossip the rest of her life.  She died in 1297 and was canonized in 1728.


Obscure Saint of the Week
Blessed James Alfred Miller
(1944-1982, USA, Guatemala)
Feast Day: February 13
Brother James was born on September 21, 1944, in Stevens Point, Wisconsin.  He encountered the Brothers of the Christian Schools (De La Salle Brothers) while at Pacelli High School in Stevens Point.  He was admitted as a postulant in 1962 and began his novitiate, taking the religious name Leo William.  He was described as likeable, sociable, simple, humble, generous, hardworking, a “common, good guy” who had the “gift of gab” with a perpetual smile and a deep faith.
He taught Spanish, English, and religion, and coached football at Cretin High School in St. Paul, Minnesota, and made his perpetual vows in 1969.  He was known as “Brother Fix-It” since he also supervised maintenance at the school.  He was then assigned to Nicaragua, where he taught classes, supervised a school, and built ten new schools.  As the Sandinista Revolution raged, making it dangerous for him to stay due to their socialist, violently anti-religious stance, he returned to Minnesota in 1979. 
Brother James, on his request, was transferred to Guatemala in 1981.  He taught English, religion, and other subjects while committing himself to better the lives of the poor.  He continued to do construction work as he had all of his life.  On February 13, 1982, while on a ladder fixing a wall for their school, he was murdered by three masked men who were probably part of the Guatemalan military intelligence death squad, G-2.  A month prior he had written to his sister: “One of two frightening things could happen to me in Guatemala. I could be kidnapped, tortured and killed or I could simply be gunned down.  You don’t think about that, that’s not why you’re there. There’s too much to be done. You can’t waste your energies worrying about what might happen. If it happens, it happens…I pray to God for the grace and strength to serve Him faithfully among the poor and oppressed in Guatemala. I place my life in His Providence. I place my trust in Him.”  He was beatified on December 7, 2019.


Obscure Saint of the Week
Saint Pedro Bautista Blásquez (1542-1597, Spain, Japan)
Feast Day: February 6
Patronage: Archdiocese of Caceres, Philippines; Japan
Pedro was born to Castillian nobility and studied at the University of Salamanca before joining the Franciscans.  After ordination in 1567, he taught philosophy and theology and was a superior for a few Franciscan communities.  He felt called to missionary work, so in 1580 he was sent to Mexico, where he founded more communities.  In 1583, he was sent to the Philippines where he became the first bishop of the Diocese of Nueva Caceres.  He founded many churches and defended the rights of the native Filipinos against the slave traders, arguing for their inherent dignity as humans.
Meanwhile, in 1590, the Jesuits had been expelled from Japan by anti-Western and anti-Christian authorities.  To replace them, Fr. Pedro and five other Franciscans were sent to Japan in 1593.  There they lived in poverty while caring for lepers and building schools, churches, convents, and hospitals. 
Despite this good work, they were hated by various groups in Japan, including Buddhists, European traders, and anti-Western Japanese officials.  They successfully convinced the emperor Toyotomi Hideyoshi that these Franciscan missionaries were a prelude to an invasion by Western powers, so he had them arrested on December 8, 1596.  The missionaries were rounded up and sent to Nagasaki where they were tortured and eventually executed.  Along the way, they were paraded through many villages, barefoot, during the difficult Japanese winter, for 800 miles, as a warning to other Christians.
St. Pedro is, thus, one of the twenty-six Franciscan, Jesuit, and Japanese converts crucified together on February 5, 1597.  During crucifixion their bodies were pierced through with lances to increase the suffering.  They are typically celebrated as St. Paul Miki and companions, and were canonized by Pope Pius IX in 1862.


Obscure Saint of the Week
Saint Dwynwen (5^th century, Wales)
Feast Day: January 25
Patronage: lovers (especially Welsh); sick animals
The beautiful and pious daughter of the Welsh king Brychan Brycheiniog, a young man named Maelon Dafodrill fell in love with Dwynwen and asked to marry her.  While she loved him, she also wished to be a nun.  One night she had a dream that she was a given a sweet drink which saved her from marriage but turned Maelon into ice.  Following the dream, she prayed for him and for all lovers to find happiness and that she not have a desire to marry. 
She then became a nun, living on Ynys Llanddwyn, an island accessible only at low tide.  A well associated with her, Ffynnon Dwynwen, became a place of pilgrimage for lovers.  Tradition says that lovers can talk to the fish in the well and whichever way they turn foretells their future.  Another tradition says that a woman can place breadcrumbs on the water and cover them with a handkerchief.  If the fish disturb it, her lover will be faithful. 
St. Dwynwen’s Church on Ynys Llanddwyn was a popular pilgrimage site in the Middle Ages.  During the Protestant Reformation, when devotions were suppressed, the site fell into disrepair.  It was only in the 19^th century, when the Anglican Church began to rediscover devotions, that people began to return.  Since the 1960s, her feast day has become a sort of Welsh Valentine’s Day.  A final tradition today says that if the fish are active in the well when a couple visits, the husband will be faithful.  “Nothing wins hearts like cheerfulness.”


Obscure Saint of the Week
Saint Jenaro Sanchez DelGadillo
(1886-1927, Mexico)
Feast Day: January 17
Jenaro was born on September 19, 1886, in Zapopan, Jalisco, Mexico.  He was ordained for the Archdiocese of Guadalajara in 1911 and served in a number of parishes, including Tecolotlan, Jalisco.  He was beloved for his pastoral work, especially for the sick.  He was humble and a great teacher.  He also was noted for his organizational and administrative skills.
When the Mexican government turned against the Church, he was arrested in 1917 for reading at Mass the letter by Archbishop Francisco Orozco y Jimenez, detailing the sufferings of the Church.  As the Cristero War broke out, he continued to celebrate Mass in private homes.  Jenaro and his parents were given shelter by the Castillo family at their ranch. 
On January 17, 1927, when he went hunting with the Castillos, soldiers entered the home to ambush him.  Though he could have escaped, he courageously decided to stay and face the soldiers.  He was hung from a mesquite tree and left as a warning.  His dying words, like so many Cristeros, was: “I pardon you, and my Father God pardons you, and long live Christ the King!”
His body was taken and buried privately in Tecolotlan.  In 1934, following the end of the war, his body was transferred to the Church of St. Michael the Archangel in Cocula, Jalisco.  He was beatified in 1992 and canonized on May 21, 2000.


Obscure Saint of the Week
Saint Theodosius the Cenobiarch
(423-529, Cappadocia (modern Türkiye))
Feast Day: January 11
Patronage: file makers
Theodosius was born into a pious family with probably some wealth due to his formal education from an early age.  He left home in his later 20s, influenced by Abraham, to more properly follow God.  He met
St. Symeon the Stylite in Antioch, who lived for 37 years on top of a pillar.  Theodosius was miraculously greeted by name and asked to ascend the pillar.  He did, and was embraced and blessed for great spiritual glory.  He continued to travel to Jerusalem and became the head of a church near Bethlehem.
After some time, he moved to become a hermit in a cave in the desert of Judah, said to be the cave where the magi stayed the night after they venerated Our Lord.  His holiness began to attract followers, and they built a monastery near Bethlehem.  There were so many that came to the monastery that there had to be different sections for students from Greece, Armenia, Persia, etc., but they all worked and prayed together well.  Near the monastery they also built a hospital, a hospice, and a mental hospital.
Theodosius was also a renowned teacher, and he opposed various heresies of the time.  The Roman Emperor at the time, Anastatius, attempted to bribe him to follow one particular heresy, but he took the money, gave it to the poor, and continued to preach against heresies.  Emperor Anastatius consequently exiled him, and he took refuge in present-day Lebanon until he was allowed to return under Emperor Justin I when he was in his 90s.
As he aged, he was stricken with a disease that made his skin as dry as stone.  He continued to work and pray and eventually died at the age of 105.  His title, “Cenobiarch,” means the head of people living a life in common.


Obscure Saint of the Week
Saint Manuel Gonzalez Garcia (1877-1940, Spain)
Feast Day: January 4
Manuel was the fourth son of five born to a carpenter in Seville.  He was a very pious young boy, active in the parish and singing in the choir.  He entered the minor seminary in Seville at the age of 12 and was ordained a priest on September 21, 1901.
The following year, he was sent to preach a mission at a church and arrived to find it dirty and neglected.  He knelt before the tabernacle and felt a call to revitalize devotion to the Eucharist and Adoration.  He wrote: “My faith was looking at Jesus through the door of that tabernacle, so silent, so patient, so good, gazing right back at me….His gaze was telling me much and asking for more. It was a gaze in which all the sadness of the Gospels was reflected…All of this sadness was there in that tabernacle, oppressing and crushing the sweet Heart of Jesus and drawing bitter tears from his eyes.”  Following the mission trip, he continued to work as a priest at San Pedro del Huelva in Seville and serve as chaplain for a nursing home.
He continued to work to strengthen devotion to the Eucharist, and eventually founded the Disciples of Saint John on March 4, 1910.  With the support of Pope Saint Pius X, the Disciples soon spread across Europe.
Manuel was chosen as auxiliary bishop of Malaga, Spain, in 1915, and was elevated to Bishop of Malaga in 1920.  He was moved to Bishop of Palencia, Spain in 1935.  He continued to spread love and devotion for the Eucharist, and became known as “Bishop of the Tabernacle.”
Bishop Manuel died of natural causes on January 4, 1940, and was buried next to the tabernacle in the Cathedral of Palencia.  He was canonized by Pope Francis on October 16, 2016.


Pope Saint Dionysius (3^rd century, Italy)
Feast Day: December 26
Little is known about his early life.  He may have been born in Greece and was a Roman citizen.  He was a monk and priest before becoming a bishop during the papacy of St. Stephen I.
After Pope Saint Sixtus II was martyred in 258 during the Valerian persecutions, the Church went nearly a year without a pope before Dionysius was elected on July 22, 259.  Due to that persecution, Dionysius spent much time reorganizing the Church which had been devastated.
He had a number of issues he had to deal with during his papacy.  He had to correct the Patriarch of Alexandria, also called Dionysius, regarding his teaching on the Trinity.  The pope also sent large amounts of money to the churches of Cappadocia (in Turkey) to rebuild churches destroyed by the invading Goths, and to ransom enslaved Christians.  He also successfully negotiated with Emperor Gallienus, who followed Valerian, for an edict of toleration that lead to a 40-year “Little Peace of the Church.”  Dionysius was the first pope to not die a martyr when he died of natural causes on December 26, 268.
One of the more difficult issues during Pope St. Dionysius’ time was the ongoing schism of the so-called Novatians.  This was due to a heresy taught in the 3^rd century by an antipope named Novatian regarding those who had left the Church during the Roman persecutions.  Novatian argued that apostates and others who had committed mortal sins like adultery, fornication, and murder, could not be Sacramentally forgiven, and therefore could not readmitted to the Church in full communion.  The Church, however, under the true pope Cornelius, had a more lenient policy of allowing apostates back into the Church.  The success of Pope Cornelius helped to solidify the Bishop of Rome as the head of the Church and also solidified the “universal” character of the Church for saints and sinners.


Feast Day: December 23
Patronage: against the death of children, difficult marriages, widows
She was born Mary Margaret Dufrost de Lajemmarais on October 15, 1701, the oldest of six children.  Her mother was the niece of Laverendrye, the first European to see the Rockies.  Her father died when she was just seven years old.  She went to school with the Ursulines in Quebec for two years, but returned at the age of 13 to help her mother raise her younger siblings and to educate them.  Her mother remarried an Irish physician, but he was unliked by others in the town and the family was forced to move to Montreal.
In August 1722, Marguerite married Francois de Youville.  The couple had six children, only two of whom survived infancy.  Both eventually became priests.  Her husband turned out to be an adulterous bootlegger who died in 1730, leaving Marguerite a significant financial debt.
Following this, she opened a small store to support her family, but she gave much of her profits away to those poorer than even herself.  She eventually gathered three other like-minded women and, with the help of Fr. Louis Normant du Faradon, they founded the Sisters of Charity of the General Hospital of Montreal (Grey Nuns) in December 1737.  They took over operation of said failing hospital in 1747, and Marguerite lived there the rest of her life.
The General Hospital, with Marguerite as the director, overcame numerous obstacles, financial and political, as well as military (their caring for English soldiers saved the hospital during the French and Indian War).  Marguerite died of natural causes at the hospital on December 23, 1771.  The Grey Nuns now serve throughout the world.


Saint Adelaide of Burgundy (931-999, France)
Feast Day: December 16
Patronage: abuse victims, against in-law problems, parents, prisoners, second marriages, widows
Adelaide was born a princess, the daughter of King Rudolf II of Burgundy.  She was married at the age of 16 to King Lothair of Italy (so she is sometimes known as Adelaide of Italy).  Lothair was poisoned by Berengarius, a rival who took the throne, in 950.  He ordered Adelaide to marry his son to solidify his power, but she refused and was imprisoned.  After a few months, she escaped and was sheltered by a priest.  She begged Otto the Great, a German king, for help, and so he came and defeated Berengarius.  They married, and he was crowned the Holy Roman Emperor in 951.
They reigned together until Otto died in 973.  He was replaced by their son Otto II, who treated her poorly when she clashed with his wife, Theophano, over power in the royal court.  Otto II died in 983 and was replaced by his infant son Otto III, with Theophano acting as regent.  At this point, Adelaide was exiled from the royal court until Theophano died in 991 and Adelaide stepped in as the new regent for the still underage Otto III.  Returned to a position of power, she did her best to help the poor, to build and restore monasteries and churches, and to evangelize, especially among the Slavs.  When Otto III came of age in 995, Adelaide retired to a convent near Cologne.  She never became a nun, but she spent the rest of her life there in prayer.  She died of natural causes in 999 and was canonized by Pope Urban II in 1097.


Obscure Saint of the Week
Saint Noél Chabanel (1613-1649, France, Canada)
Feast Day: December 8 (also September 26 as one of North American Martyrs)
Noél was one of four children and the son of a notary.  He entered the Jesuit novitiate in 1630 in Toulouse.  He taught in Toulouse from 1632-1639 and was ordained a priest in 1641.  Following ordination, he taught rhetoric in Rodez.
Like other Jesuits of the time, he felt a call to missionary work.  He was, therefore, sent as a missionary to the Hurons in New France (Canada) in 1643.  After arriving, he had a very difficult time adapting to the new land, culture, food, and languages.  This lead to a time of great spiritual struggle.  Rather than giving up, he decided to rely on faith.  His superiors gave him permission to return to France, but he realized it was God’s Will that he be a missionary, no matter how difficult.  He made a vow before the Eucharist that, if called to do so, he would spend the rest of his life in the missionary field.
From winter 1647 to fall 1649 he traveled with St. John de Brébeuf to work among the Algonquins at Sainte Marie.  He was then sent to Etarita to work with Father Garnier.  After only a few weeks, the situation was deemed too dangerous, and he was sent back to Quebec on December 5, shortly before an attack on the Christian Hurons by an Iroquois war party.  While leading a group of survivors to safety, he was murdered by an apostate Huron on December 8.  It was not until two years later that the nature of his martyrdom became known when the man admitted he had done so out of his hatred for the missionaries and the faith.
Quote from St. Noél: “I am going where obedience calls me, but whether I stay there or receive permission from my superior to return to the mission where I belong, I must serve God faithfully until death.”


Saint Catherine Labouré (1806-1876, France)
Feast Day: November 28
Patronage: the elderly, informed people, the Miraculous Medal, pigeons
Zoe was born in Burgundy, France, on May 2, 1806.  She was the ninth of eleven children for farmers Pierre and Madeleine.  She never learned to read or write, but had to take over care for the household after her mother died in 1815 and her older sister joined the Sisters of Charity.  Years later she visited a hospital run by the Sisters of Charity.  She had a vision of their founder, St. Vincent de Paul, telling her that God wanted her to work with the sick.  She joined the order in January 1830 and took the name Catherine.
On July 18, 1830, she had a vision of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the chapel of the convent.  She was told, “God wishes to charge you with a mission. You will be contradicted, but do not fear; you will have the grace to do what is necessary. Tell your spiritual director all that passes within you. Times are evil in France and in the world.”  In November she again had a vision of the Blessed Mother.  This time she was told to have a medal made.  On one side was the image of Our Lady with the words: “O Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee.”  On the other side was the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary.  She relayed the vision to her spiritual director with the promise that “all who wear them will receive great graces.”
Her spiritual director, Fr. Jean Marie Aladel, eventually took her cause to the bishop, who ordered the making of what is now known as the Miraculous Medal.
She spent the rest of her life caring for the elderly and sick.  Catherine died on December 31, 1876.  Her body was exhumed in 1933 and found to be incorrupt.  She was beatified in 1933 and canonized in 1947.  The Miraculous Medal that came from her visions remains a favorite devotion for many Catholics.

Saint Marguerite d’Youville (1701-1771, Canada)